Avenue of Mysteries - Softcover

Irving, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1451664176 ISBN 13: 9781451664171

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2016

Synopsis

John Irving returns to the themes that established him as one of our most admired and beloved authors in this absorbing novel of fate and memory.

In Avenue of Mysteries, Juan Diego--a fourteen-year-old boy, who was born and grew up in Mexico--has a thirteen-year-old sister. Her name is Lupe, and she thinks she sees what's coming--specifically, her own future and her brother's. Lupe is a mind reader; she doesn't know what everyone is thinking, but she knows what most people are thinking. Regarding what has happened, as opposed to what will, Lupe is usually right about the past; without your telling her, she knows all the worst things that have happened to you.

Lupe doesn't know the future as accurately. But consider what a terrible burden it is, if you believe you know the future--especially your own future, or, even worse, the future of someone you love. What might a thirteen-year-old girl be driven to do, if she thought she could change the future?

As an older man, Juan Diego will take a trip to the Philippines, but what travels with him are his dreams and memories; he is most alive in his childhood and early adolescence in Mexico. As we grow older--most of all, in what we remember and what we dream--we live in the past. Sometimes, we live more vividly in the past than in the present.

Avenue of Mysteries is the story of what happens to Juan Diego in the Philippines, where what happened to him in the past--in Mexico--collides with his future.

About this title

Review:

"A richly detailed, imaginative and beautiful novel, with a series of events that seem equally bizarre and resoundingly universal.... It is a complex and many-layered novel that covers a lot of intellectual, moral and emotional ground, but in the end, it is the simplest, saddest and most wonderful tale of the human condition. It is about what we all fear: finding people to love, and then losing them, too."--The Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"A dream-steeped, enchanted, and often amusing tale.... Irving keeps this imaginative story, his aging novelist, his odd cast of characters, and his readers, moving on a trajectory toward collision in this unfailingly masterful narrative."--USA Today

"Irving has always been a consummately convincing realist, in matters both great and small.... While writers of later generations seldom come close to achieving Irving's levels of verisimilitude, his realism is transmogrified by his general whimsicality and by his attraction to baroque extrapolations of the absurd. This sort of ambition... is part of what makes Irving such a prodigious entertainer.... This novel is not autobiographical, but it does present an aging artist with a sacred wound, tremendous desire, and an endless appetite for wonder."--The Boston Globe

"A vivid writer about sex."--The New York Times

"Like all of Irving's novels, Avenue of Mysteries is about awakening -- to the past, to hidden emotions, and to the truth and weight of trauma and childhood. Only this time, the narrative is dreamier and more ruminative."--Minneapolis Star Tribune

"The character is a captivating original; his tale includes humor, pathos, and acute observations. Once again, Irving charms by blending the fantastical with what is deeply, affectingly real."--People

"The outsize characters on the two vast alternating canvases Irving paints are more varied than the acts in a circus caravan."--Philadelphia Inquirer

"The novel is a remarkable feat... as Irving ignores the constraints of conventional fiction and tosses all of his ideas into his novelist's blender and turns it on high."--Dallas Morning News

"Avenue of Mysteries is full of Irvingisms -- the transvestite, the circus, the orphanage, the character who can't speak, the car accident, the missing father, the weird Christianity. These elements are part of the fun for fans: hearing the familiar rhythm, finding the trademark components fit together in a novel way."--Newsday

"Meaningfully dark and classically quirky."--Las Vegas Weekly

Book Description:

In his latest novel, John Irving explores - in his inimitable way - the ways in which our pasts reverberate in our presents and, indeed, our futures.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1451664176
• ISBN 13: 9781451664171
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496